1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the field of electronic commerce. More specifically, the present invention is related to enhancing sales for service providers by utilizing an opportunistic e-commerce approach based on an unexpected change in the schedule of services (time, location).
2. Discussion of Prior Art
There has been a steady increase in the speed and ease with which business transactions are carried over a network such as, but not limited to, wide area networks (WANs), local area networks (LAN's), or the World Wide Web (WWW). Systems based on networks listed above deal with a plethora of information available in various formats (e.g., documents, images, sounds, etc.) A significant focus in recent e-commerce activities revolves around optimization solutions with the end-user as the center of the focus. One common challenge associated with such e-commerce systems is whether or not they are able to filter out relevant or pertinent information that benefits the end-user. Many filtering techniques utilize data extraction as a method to filter out unnecessary documents (or data) and provide only relevant or pertinent information that is beneficial from the end-user's perspective. Data extraction is accomplished in many systems via a method often referred to as data mining.
Data mining involves a class of database applications that look for hidden patterns in a data set. For example, data mining software helps retail companies find customers with common interests. Data mining is commonly misused to describe software that presents data in new ways. True data mining software does not just change the presentation, but discovers previously unknown relationships among the data. In data mining, data is usually collected at the server-side, client-side, proxy servers, or obtained from a database.
Data extracted via data mining fall under many different categories, one common category being web pages that are accessed by end-users via an interface (e.g., browsers like Netscape Navigators® or Internet Explorers®). In general, web pages usually contain, but are not limited to, textual and/or graphical data. One common problem associated with data extracted from web pages is that there is no standard format associated with this data. This is a significant problem encountered by data mining software, since in most cases it is not able to analyze the extracted data in a logical way.
If used to its full advantage, this data can be automatically retrieved and processed for use in business intelligence and various other purposes. For example, data mining used for transportation schedules and tracking can benefit both the traveler (consumer) and business (sales provider). When used along with the advent of personal digital assistants (PDA's) with network connectivity (more specifically Internet connectivity), cellular web telephones with integrated global positioning service (GPS) receivers, etc., there are new opportunities to enhance marketing communication and resulting sales.
Although personalized advertising and direct marketing are becoming more sophisticated through the use of data mining software programs, current advertising and marketing strategies do not enjoy all the benefits from new emerging Internet and e-commerce applications and technologies. Furthermore, none of the prior art systems utilize an opportunistic approach based on an unexpected change in the schedule of services (time, location) with Internet-based technologies to benefit and enhance the generation of sales opportunities for sales providers.